Taking place October 26th to the 28th, the first annual Big Apple Anime Festival will welcome over 5,000 anime fans to enjoy new and classic anime screenings, symposiums, a dealer room, a cosplay contest and much more! Among the guests invited are Sailor Moon and Utena director Kunihiko Ikuahara, artist Katsuhiro Otomo, Koichi Ohata, Rusher Ikeda, Toshio Maeda, Rintaro, plus plenty of voice actors from both sides of the Pacific Ocean. The organizers of the event would like to remind everyone that even in the wake of the tragic events of September 11th, they're still right on schedule to welcome otaku from near and far to have a good time at what they call "The Cannes Film Festival of Anime Manga Culture," taking place at the Directors Guild of America Theater and other venues in mid-town Manhattan.

The Animefringe/Big Apple Anime Fest Giveaway Contest

As a special treat for all you loyal Animefringe readers, Big Apple Anime Fest has graciously donated 4 anime DVDs (Grave of the Fire Flies, Angel Sanctuary, Harlock Saga, and Patlabor: The Mobile Police Vol.1) and a pair of All Access Passes to BAAF for us to give away to 5 lucky winners. To enter the contest, all you need to do is enter your full name, mailing address and e-mail address. The contest closes at midnight on Wednesday, October 24 and winners will be drawn later that day, so sign up now while ya still can!

NOTE: All information entered will be kept FULLY confidential and will not be shared, given away or sold to a third party for any reason whatsoever. Only one entry is counted per mailing address or e-mail address.

(Sorry, the contest is now closed! Thanks to all who participated! ^_^)

Vandread

Beginning October 14, nine o'clock at night, a new spinoff of Vandread will be shown on the Animax Sky Perfect network in Japan (channel 724 by the way), entitled Vandread: Taidou Hen. It will be aired only days after the first episode of Vandread Second Stage goes on the air on October 5th on the WOWOW network.

Sakura Taisen Online

As the era of the Dreamcast slowly comes to an end, a brand new Sakura Taisen game is on the horizon. Sakura Taisen Online will be released this December for the Dreamcast and Playstation 2 in time to coincide with the release of the Sakura Taisen Movie.

Both a Teito version and a Paris version will be availble at launch time, along with standard and special editions of both the titles. The actual games themselves are little more than a bunch of multiplayer minigames, but should be a nice little diversion for any one able to log on to the servers.

Final Fantasy: Unlimited

In October, the Final Fantasy based anime, Final Fantasy: Unlimited will be preimering. Like the Final Fantasy movie, Unlimited is set in our world. In this story of orphans searching for their lost parents, sci-fi elements are combined with a Grimm's Fairy Tale fantasy (starting to sound familar?). The heroine of Unlimited is Lisa, who helps the orphans Ai and Yu search for their parents. Kaze, a Vicent (Final Fantasy VII) like character, is the hero. He suffers from amnesia, in classic Final Fantasy style. The animation style seems old, something akin to Ranma meets Amano.
Final Fantasy: Unlimited will be featured as one of the star series to start off the month of October. Air time will be Tuesday nights from 6:30 to 7:00 starting on October 2nd. Listed in the October line up together with FF:U are several re-runs and special edition anime series from the late 80's and early 90's including Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor: Labor Selection (Mobile Police Patlabor) which will be a series consisting of the 'best episodes' from the original Patlabor TV series and OVA series, Captain Tsubasa (third season), and Cyborg 009 among many others.